


Drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo

by orphan_account



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Im tired, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump, and read 0 books, author has seen 3 movies, but jasper's my boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 14:18:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20175676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Things aren't as easily forgotten as Jasper had hoped.





	Drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo

Jasper didn’t even scream, the pain was far too familiar, and he was far too numb to it. He barely registered the teeth sinking into his arm, breaking old scar tissue as the vampire struck him. 

(Jasper has screamed the first time, the pain unbearable, nothing like he’d ever felt. But that was when he was naturally a few decades old, now, hundreds of years old, it was normal, mundane even.) 

He ignored the ripping of flesh as he pulled the vampire off of himself, pulling its (saying  _ it  _ made it easier, it wasn’t a person, wasn’t real) head from its body. 

The small clan was dead, taken from immortality in one sweep from the Cullens. 

Jasper saw Alice across the battlefield, her eyes naturally darting to his arm, a soft apology on her lips, guilt rippling off her. Jasper simply shook his head, she was always upset when she didn’t see an injury coming, somehow it was her fault. 

Back at home, regrouping after the fight and celebrating a job well done, there had been no human casualties, Jasper sat on the couch. 

Absentmindedly, he traced the bite wound on his arm. It would scar, again, like they always did, just one more to join the collection, one more, one more. It was always  _ just one more.  _

She would whisper that into his ear,  _ just one more time, for me, Major, for me _ . And he would listen,  _ only one more time, this is the last time.  _ He would fight and kill and  _ force _ himself to love it because if he didn’t love it, he hated it, and if he hated it, he hated himself, for becoming a monster, a killer,  _ monster, monster, monster -  _

He fought and there would be hands around his head, pulling and yanking trying to decapitate the monster that will kill them eventually. He killed them all in the end. 

There were hands around his head now and everything he knew slipped away.  _ They would kill him, he  _ had  _ to fight, it was him or them. He had to _ . 

So Jasper fought, instinctively going for the areas he knew to be lethal, fighting harder than any newblood knew, because  _ it would only be one more time, fight, I promise it’s your last.  _

The newblood’s were rioting. It had happened a few times, when they thought they could overpower the Major and Maria. 

Someone had their arms around him, and Jasper,  _ Major, he was the Major,  _ threw them over his shoulder, jumping onto their body and throwing punch after punch after punch. 

Someone was screaming  _ Jasper _ and the Major turned, though he wasn’t sure why. He found a girl with black hair and golden eyes, wide and wild, staring at him. 

He didn’t recognise her and a voice whispered that he wouldn’t know her for a long, long time. 

The Major couldn’t discern what she was feeling, something between fear and pity and. . . love? It was so foreign that he knew it the moment he felt it, recognised the void in himself where it should sit. 

But then there was more hands on him, two pairs taking either arm, pulling him up and holding him in place. The Major struggled, using every ounce of his strength but he couldn’t move. 

_ This is it _ , he thought,  _ the monster has earned his fate.  _

“I won’t beg,” he said anyway, he would never accept his truth. “Not this time.”

_ Beg me for it. Beg  _ for  _ me.  _ She would laugh, teasing him, drawing him in with promises of becoming more, more than the broken pieces he was. 

_ Beg _ , the newbloods said,  _ beg me not to kill you _ .  _ Like how you killed so many of us, monster, monster, monster -  _

_ You’ve killed as much as I _ . 

“You never have to beg. Not here,” said a voice, though it didn’t belong to a newblood, too commanding, too confident. 

The Major saw golden eyes,  _ golden _ , not red, not the blood that stained his own. Golden like a sunrise, like home. Golden because he didn’t have to kill, the eyes were more than that. 

Golden. Like Alice’s. 

The small girl, drowning in fear and pity and love, love for him, not for the Major, thought she didn’t hate him, but love for Jasper. 

Slowly, ever so  _ fucking slowly _ , Jasper dragged his ragged mind back into the present, forced his golden eyes (not red, not bloody) to see the clan in front of him.  _ Family _ , a voice provided,  _ your family.  _

Emmett was holding one arm while Edward held the other, Jasper’s brothers eyeing him carefully. Esme and Rosalie were busy holding Alice back, who was practically throwing herself forward, trying to reach him. 

Carlisle was before him, a hand pressed against his chest and an unwavering gaze. “Not here,” he repeated. “You’re here. You’re safe.” 

Jasper would have collapsed, would had fallen from exhaustion, relief, if it weren’t for his brothers. A funny parallel, Alice had saved him from falling too far away once, so many years ago and he still needed that help. 

Jasper should be crying, he realised, the hollowness in his chest, the prickling of tears at his eyes told him he should be crying. But nothing ever came. Just a numb, muted heaviness in himself. 

He’s lowered back onto the couch, and he tried to ignore the wariness and caution flowing from his family but it was suffocating, drowning him under the weight of their judgement. 

This time, he can feel himself slipping away again, can feel their stares morphing into Maria, her caress leading him further and further from the light. 

Until the light was crouching before him, soft hands hesitantly reaching for his face. And Jasper had the sickening realisation that Alice had been the one to hold him like this before, which means, oh  _ God _ , he had hurt her. Jasper had attacked her like the  _ monster _ he was. 

_ Monster. Monster. Monster.  _

“Look at me, Jasper.” 

_ That’s not my name _ , a voice supplied. And Jasper beat that voice back, leaning into Alice’s hold. 

He meet her eyes, gold shining back onto gold. 

“There you are.” Alice smiles and it was like the sun was breaking through a hundred year storm, everything good returning to the world. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he responded quietly, not yet willing to look at another person. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” 

“No problem, sir,” Alice said, rubbing her thumb gently over his cheek, her calm outweighed everything else. “Just glad to have you back.” 

-

It wasn’t the first episode Jasper had had, but the first in front of his entire family. (Alice was always the exception. She knew him better than he knew himself.)

He had more.

Some episodes were with his brothers. Edward could hear them coming, stopping them before it became dangerous. Emmett could hold him still, waiting it out until he was calm again. 

Some episodes were with the women of his life. Esme held him as he trembled, muttering reassurances into her ear until her son returned. Rosalie rode it out, dodging his attacks as he came back on his own time. 

Carlisle and Alice were the ones to identify his triggers, sharing the list (and it was long) with the family so they could all be prepared. 

The desert was one they didn’t really have to worry about but Emmett once wanted a brother-bonding vacation, and they ended up in the Mojave desert. Edward was pulling cactus needles out of himself for hours. 

A passing tourist had said to their partner  _ buen trabajo  _ and Jasper’s breathing hitched. Trembling memories of the language purred into his ear stalked his mind, every word spoken sounding like her. 

One day, Jasper swore he caught Maria’s scent and almost tore apart the house to find her until he realised Rosalie had simply worn a perfume that smelt similar. 

There were days where nothing could remind Jasper of her, the dry heat, and the feeling of bone crumbling under his touch. There were days were golden was normal, like nothing had existed before it, and he was happy. 

The other days still happened, they were bound to. But Jasper prevailed through it all, a family by his side and the most beautiful ray of light he’d ever seen to hold his hand through it. 

  
  
  



End file.
